• The combination of coping with mental health problems and caring for children makes parents vulnerable.• Family-centred practice can help to maintain and strengthen important family relationships, and to identify and enhance the strengths of parents with a mental illness, thus contributing to their recovery.• Parents with mental illness find strength for parenting in several ways. They feel responsible, and this helps them to stay alert while parenting; parenthood also offers a basis for social participation.• Dedication to the parental role provides a focus; parents develop strengths and skills as they find a balance between attending to their own lives and caring for their children, and parenting prompts them to find adequate sources of support and leads to a valued identity.• Practitioners can support parents with mental health problems to set and address parenting related goals.
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ABSTRACT: Introduction: The literature shows that Korsakoff’s syndrome is associated with a wide range of severe comorbid somatic and psychiatric health problems that lead to care needs in several domains of functioning. Aim: To provide a comprehensive overview of Korsakoff patients’ health conditions and related care needs. Method: Following the PRISMA guidelines, we searched MedLine, PsycInfo, Cochrane Library and CINAHL up to January 2019. After applying our inclusion criteria, two reviewers independently selected the studies, extracted the data, and assessed methodological quality. Results: Twelve articles were included. The commonest somatic comorbid conditions were liver disease, cardiovascular disease, COPD and diabetes mellitus. The commonest psychiatric comorbid conditions were mood disorder, personality disorder and psychotic disorder. Anxiety, aggressive/agitated behaviour, depressive symptoms and care needs in social functioning and (instrumental) activities of daily living were also very commonly reported. Discussion: In patients with Korsakoff's syndrome, somatic and psychiatric comorbid conditions co-occur with behavioural and functional problems. They are compounded by patients’ poor self-awareness regarding their health status and functioning. Adequate responses to their care needs require high-quality integrated care.
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Worldwide, an increasing number of students in higher education have mental health problems. Talking about these problems at the university is often not that easy. Students fear to be stigmatised if they disclose their problems to others. However, if they do not disclose their problems, they may not get the support they often need. Existing interventions to help people with this disclosure-dilemma are not specifically aimed at students, and lack certain important aspects. Therefore, we developed an intervention to help students with making a personal, well-informed decision regarding whether or not to disclose their problems. We examined the experiences of students and professionals with the new intervention. Moreover, we studied whether the students were less concerned about disclosure and experienced less decisional conflicts after using the intervention. Students with mental health problems from three universities of applied sciences in the Netherlands completed questionnaires prior to the intervention, directly after and three months after. In addition, the educational professionals reported their experiences with applying the intervention. Both students and professionals appreciated the contents and structure of the intervention and students’ level of concern about disclosure and level of decisional conflicts were lower after using the intervention.
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Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is a pattern of alcohol use that involves having trouble controlling drinking behaviour, even when it causes health issues (addiction) or problems functioning in daily (social and professional) life. Moreover, festivals are a common place where large crowds of festival-goers experience challenges refusing or controlling alcohol and substance use. Studies have shown that interventions at festivals are still very problematic. ARise is the first project that wants to help prevent AUD at festivals using Augmented Reality (AR) as a tool to help people, particular festival visitors, to say no to alcohol (and other substances). ARise is based on the on the first Augmented Reality Exposure Therapy (ARET) in the world that we developed for clinical treatment of AUD. It is an AR smartphone driven application in which (potential) visitors are confronted with virtual humans that will try to seduce the user to accept an alcoholic beverage. These virtual humans are projected in the real physical context (of a festival), using innovative AR glasses. Using intuitive phone, voice and gesture interactions, it allows users to personalize the safe experience by choosing different drinks and virtual humans with different looks and levels of realism. ARET has been successfully developed and tested on (former) AUD patients within a clinical setting. Research with patients and healthcare specialists revealed the wish to further develop ARET as a prevention tool to reach people before being diagnosed with AUD and to extend the application for other substances (smoking and pills). In this project, festival visitors will experience ARise and provide feedback on the following topics: (a) experience, (b) awareness and confidence to refuse alcohol drinks, (c) intention to use ARise, (d) usability & efficiency (the level of realism needed), and (e) ideas on how to extend ARise with new substances.
Agricultural/horticultural products account for 9% of Dutch gross domestic product. Yearly expansion of production involves major challenges concerning labour costs and plant health control. For growers, one of the most urgent problems is pest detection, as pests cause up to 10% harvest loss, while the use of chemicals is increasingly prohibited. For consumers, food safety is increasingly important. A potential solution for both challenges is frequent and automated pest monitoring. Although technological developments such as propeller-based drones and robotic arms are in full swing, these are not suitable for vertical horticulture (e.g. tomatoes, cucumbers). A better solution for less labour intensive pest detection in vertical crop horticulture, is a bio-inspired FW-MAV: Flapping Wings Micro Aerial Vehicle. Within this project we will develop tiny FW-MAVs inspired by insect agility, with high manoeuvrability for close plant inspection, even through leaves without damage. This project focusses on technical design, testing and prototyping of FW-MAV and on autonomous flight through vertically growing crops in greenhouses. The three biggest technical challenges for FW-MAV development are: 1) size, lower flight speed and hovering; 2) Flight time; and 3) Energy efficiency. The greenhouse environment and pest detection functionality pose additional challenges such as autonomous flight, high manoeuvrability, vertical take-off/landing, payload of sensors and other equipment. All of this is a multidisciplinary challenge requiring cross-domain collaboration between several partners, such as growers, biologists, entomologists and engineers with expertise in robotics, mechanics, aerodynamics, electronics, etc. In this project a co-creation based collaboration is established with all stakeholders involved, integrating technical and biological aspects.
Effectiveness of Supported Education for students with mental health problems, an experimental study.The onset of mental health problems generally occurs between the ages of 16 and 23 – the years in which young people follow postsecondary education, which is a major channel in ourso ciety to prepare for a career and enhance life goals. Several studies have shown that students with mental health problems have a higher chance of early school leaving. Supported Education services have been developed to support students with mental health to remain at school. The current project aims to study the effect of an individually tailored Supported Education intervention on educational and mental health outcomes of students with mental health problems at a university of applied sciences and a community college. To that end, a mixed methods design will be used. This design combines quantitative research (Randomized Controlled Trial) with qualitative research (focus groups, monitoring, interviews). 100 students recruited from the two educational institutes will be randomly allocated to either the intervention or control group.
Centre of Expertise, part of Hanze
Lectorate, part of NHL Stenden Hogeschool
